Introduction to the Existential Soup...

Baby boomers---those born between 1946 and 1964---are attempting to do something that previous generations did not do the same way. We are trying to age well---that is, we’re attempting to do “conscious mid-life-ing.” It’s not just about staying healthy, looking good and staying connected. We’ve been told that it needs to be an ‘inside job’ as well, and yet we often feel at a disadvantage without the familiar grounding of traditional religion, unconflicted patriotism, and family rootedness that our elders had. We still look to the trio of God, country and family to help us, but the assault of the evening news continually shocks us into a belief that we live in a meaningless world in which random acts of violence and catastrophe can happen daily.

At the same time, many of us are seeing something new and unusual happening. Some people call it “the New Paradigm” but it’s not just one theory or idea--- for there are many new paradigms, but what they all share is the willingness to look at things differently and to make connections between things that were previously seen as separate. In this paradigm that I’m inviting you to explore with me, it’s about saying yes to explore a mélange of ideas that strike at the heart of our creative and spiritual lives.

I’m challenging you to pause….to allow a willing suspension of disbelief to look at the intuitive art of re-incarnational astrology combined with the spiritual-symbolic psychology of Carl Jung, and the world view of some of the Existentialist philosophers. This Existential viewpoint, used by many creativity coaches today,  seeks to inspire us to wrestle meaningfulness out of a world in which the presence or absence of a God doesn’t matter as much as the need to make authentic and creative choices. And the evolutionary time table of the Soul in evolutionary astrology can serve as a comforting guide as we move into aging through the deeper and deeper levels of individuation and authenticity as Elders. 

This paradigm stirs them all together in what looks like a heady stew with challenging chunks, but really is quite a tasty new recipe that I believe can nourish you in a surprising ways. It's not complicated or difficult to digest--I promise you that! It's come together through sampling and tasting many paradigms and yet what has been created has no name or definiton. I have been circling around these ideas for a lifetime, and I love how the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke put it when he said:

 “I live my life in growing orbits
 Which move out over the things of the world.
 Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
 But that will be my attempt.
 I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
 And I have been circling for a thousand years,
 And I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm
Or a great song.”

In this case, the invitation is to circle around the musings of this new paradigm—of how three subtly interconnected world views—that of existentialism, Jungian psychology, and the astrological re-incarnational view of the Soul’s journey through time. It is more a poetic language of the Soul than a true synthesis or science. But perhaps that is what a language of the Soul must be---not a dogma but more a compelling metaphor---a suggestion!  And if we become familiar with a language that speaks to our deepest needs and longings, I believe we will then have a guide to navigating the murky waters of meaninglessness that often accompany aging.

 I call this little book “musings” because there will be ramblings and personal stories and a little ‘off the beat’ synthesizing of these ideas. My hope is that you will be empowered in seeing how these three big ideas/theories are really quite simple, useful, and inter-related.  At some point I will also put on my astrologer’s hat and talk about what we don’t want to think about—that fear of end-times and the Mayan calendar that ends in 2012. But that’s for later.

In astrology, we are star-gazing in the sense of being in awe of the patterns and scaffolding that frame a life and connects one to the larger cosmos. And there’s a hidden promise there that there’s something deep and mysterious that can hold us as we look into that ‘quantum’ area where physics meets metaphysics, where astronomy meets astrology, and into that luminous nebulae where the artists, philosophers, scientists and astrologers are subtly pointing us to...and it looks less like a black hole and more like a new space where the infinite cosmos meets the individual psyche. And it is at this point that something rather magical can happen....

This is not a simple cognitive theory, nor a secret of positive thinking, but a confluence of new and old ideas that are best when put together in a particular manner. Like a new recipe, the ingredients that I’m choosing to put together are familiar, but the choice of ingredients are carefully chosen, and the taste of the recipe is fresh and unusual. I believe it could change your life, and I invite you to withhold your old tasty assumptions and to dare to try something new.

   Chapter One; an Overview of the Recipe---

So let me begin to muse a little: I was born in 1947 and will be turning sixty this year. I was born towards the beginning of this generation of “boomers” and grew up in the 60’s when astrology was beginning to have a renaissance, and in the ‘70’s when books such as Gail Sheehy’s: Passages was making the best seller’s list. Many of us in this generation visited Paris and sat in the cafes where the existentialists such as Sartre and Camus debated existentialism, and where women philosophers such as Simone de Beauvoir, and journalist, Anais Nin, sought to have a voice. We sat there, drinking our espressos for the first time, searching for our own words and true voices, and writing in our journals. We were often desperate in both our need for relationship and in our over-idealism about what relationships and life owed us. We wondered what would hold us spiritually in the years ahead, for many of us were just rational enough to have tossed off the religion of our fathers. Yet for so many baby boomers, we got off the flight from Paris and from existential freedom and got tossed right back into a less than heady stew here in the US. It was a lot less about philosophy and more about finding a job. But even back then, we thirsted for a guide for conscious living through the turbulent uncharted waters. 

This book is one such guide for living, and though some of it will be framed by the astrological language of mid-life transits, it will also be ‘informed’ as we like to say, by insights from the first guru of aging: Carl Jung, and by a few of the great existential writers and philosophers who have gone before us. You don’t need to believe in astrology, existentialism, or Jungian theory to ponder the theories presented here. But I offer them to you simply as mid-life experiments and I encourage you not to take them on face value but to test this new slant on these ideas in your own life. My hope is that you take what works for you and leave the rest.

I imagine myself to be not very different from the reader of this book. We’ve all been exposed to the same kinds of current events and cultural trends, yet what I’d like to give you, the reader, is a way to see three of the large ideas of our time in simple terms, and to see how they are can be used in your life to nourish you.  Perhaps I’m writing this---the book I’d like to read--- in hopes that it will make me think deeper and connect the dots of half-forgotten truths. The large dots—the concepts of existentialism, astrology, and Jungian psychology, can be broken down into some very essential and basic ideas that are useful and soul nourishing. And hopefully I can offer you, the reader, a new perspective as to how they are intimately connected and supportive of each other.

Because I am a professional astrologer, the astrological world-view will be a theme as it gives us a structural pattern for what to expect at the turning points on our mid-life journey.  The existential world view provides another base with its motivating impulse for making meaning out of even our littlest actions, and the Jungian world view pulls it all together by drawing our attention to the numinous Self—what some would call God—and shows how what is unconscious must be made conscious, lest we act out our unacknowledged fears and compulsions. 

Essentially, I’m challenging you to become a ‘meaning-maker’ by seeing how these particular ideas weave together into an invitation to create and live in a meaningful world. It’s likely that you have some “pre-judices” about these ideas---ie: that “woo-woo vibrations” from planets don’t effect us at all---you’re right! That those French philosophers were pedantic and a little arrogant---you’re right! And that Carl Jung was a rich man who slipped into womanizing and anti-Semitic thinking at times---you’re right! But there is a way to see each of these traditions differently, and to see how their gifts to us now far out-weigh misunderstandings and occasional human mis-behavior.

I believe we live in a time when one of the greatest dangers is not only global warming but global cooling; the idea that we are becoming numb and cool to the sweet vulnerability of human life. I fear that we are losing our ability to see the meaningfulness within and around us, and that this de-sensitization of ourselves and the demonizing of the “Other” is dangerous.  Violent acts of entertainment and reactionary aggression threatens our ability to ‘grow our Souls’. The despair and polarization that we immerse ourselves in through entertainment and religious dogmatism is filtering down to our children, and causes despair. It flies in the face of the new paradigms we’ve been discussing. Let me tell you why I believe this to be true…

This spring, my friend Henry jumped off the city bridge. His suicide was a shock to our community as he was not only a well respected professional man, but a father of three, and someone who seemed to really enjoy his motorcycle, his guitar playing, and his friends. Henry was a good looking man and admired for his gentle and humorous ways. What some of us didn’t know was what lay below the surface of his life that erupted that particular day last spring when he took his life.

The minister at his Memorial service was wise enough to say that Henry didn’t take his life; his sickness took his life. True. Henry hid a lifetime of dealing with intense inner struggle and anger mixed with vulnerability---those qualities we label as anxiety and depression. Was his death simply a medical casualty based primarily on his biology? What other factors were happening?

If Henry had come to me as an astrologer, I would have said that he was in the particular life passage called the Second Saturn Return and would have talked to him about the challenges of this frequently ‘melancholy’ time. Yet because I see astrology as "the meaningful contemplation of change"--a phrase my friend and fellow astrologer Greg Bogart has used to describe astrology--well, I would have looked at Henry's birth chart, and looked for the highest expression of this Saturn Return in his life. And I would have looked at the evolutionary journey of his Soul in terms of not only his age, but what I call the “family karmic inheritance”and asked if he had condered his current anxiety in terms of his parental inheritance and expectations. I would have looked at the North and South Nodes on chart and attempted to describe the metaphorical parable of the gifts and challenges that he was bringing over from his past lives, and looked to see how this might have contributed to an “emotional hangover” from unresolved Soul-issues. Most of all, I hope that I would have stressed the temporary nature of this passage, and that no matter how hard it was for him to feel good right now, that there would be many more chances to make it right and feel better.

 Henry’s situation was undoubtedly more complicated than I know, and I don’t think a few sessions with an astrologer/counselor would have made a huge difference. We don't know. I’m sure  his friends tried to help him many times and in many ways. Yet still, if I had a chance for a time together with him, I would have encouraged him to read about the psychologist Carl Jung’s nervous breakdown and what Jung did to come out of it. We might have talked about how unconscious separation anxiety and rage can act out in destructive ways, and if there were any ways that following “doctor’s orders” sounded too close to following “father’s orders”?  We might have talked about what Henry truly valued in his life and if there were ways he could make his ‘existence’ more meaningful by being more present both to himself and others. Did he feel responsible for anyone or anything? What would it take for him to be responsive to his deepest needs? These are the kinds of questions that would have woven together the astrological, the existential, and the Jungian language into a meaningful conversation. I never did have a chance to have this conversation with him.

However, no matter how well intentioned I might have been, the biological effect of accumulated stress and anxiety does not easily respond to ‘talk therapy’ of any kind unless it is consistent and accompanied by a change in life style and medication. Having experienced stress induced anxiety and depression myself, I have great empathy for Henry’s struggle, as well as the similar struggles of Vincent Van Gogh, William Styron, Hemingway, and many others. It doesn’t seem to matter if we are prolific and unseen in our creativity—such as Vincent Van Gogh, or prolific and acknowledged---like Hemingway. Perhaps what matters most is that we attempt, like the writer William Styron, to wrest meaning out of our experience, rather than grasping for quick and literal solutions to unconscious problems of meaning and psychological pain. For many of us, we simply use distraction, addiction and rage to make our way through hard times. We get divorced, start a fight, drive too fast, buy more ‘toys’ or worse. This book is an exploration of other ways to approach all this. It is an attempt to entice people like Henry into “tasting” other ways of creating meaning, and offering him the idea that we have predictable times, and innumerable chances, to reach for it in each life.

 In the following chapters, I want to look what it takes to sustain meaning and the will to live---not only in a person who is biologically or karmically disposed to depression and anxiety. but for all of us.  I believe it sometimes takes a heroic effort to uncover the meaning and to create love in a life that feels devoid of both. Yet we need a sense of purpose to hold us in hard times. The Existentialists wrote passionately about this struggle to wrest meaning out of meaninglessness, and like a scrawny kid working on developing muscles, they believed we all have the potential to transform even a worse case scenario of an abused childhood into what they called an “authentic life”.

And we’ll also look at what the theorist and writer, Carl Jung, believed. Whereas the Existentialists were writing to motivate us to consciously develop our sense of meaning and purpose, Jung felt that the issues lay more in the realm of the unconscious. He developed a theory of consciousness in which he expressed his feeling that all neurotic behavior after mid-life was due to lack of a spiritual focus. This was not about finding "God" as much as finding a way home to the God Within; a God of our own understanding. He saw that most people turn to “spirits” rather than to Spirit, and he told Bill W., the founder of AA—that only “Spiritus contra Spiritum” meaning that it takes Spirit to counteract the effects of spirits alone. But today we take Spirit literally in dogmatic religions and drink, and then find that we act out often unconsciously, as a last resort. So that what is buried in our psyche---the aggression and the shame, acts out in strange ways such as jumping off a bridge, abusing a child, or going to war. Jung offers us other possibilities to consider.

Conscious change has a better chance of happening when we dare to look at things through the eyes of ‘Spirit’ and when we understand what Spirit uniquely means for each of us. Existentialists remind us that we create our essence with each responsible choice, and that there are innumerable ways to be authentically present. Astrologers such as myself believe that our free will choices over-ride the tendencies of any potentially negative transit, despite the fact that we love to talk about the relation between character and fate, and arguing that a chnge in character alters one's 'fate'. And the  Jungians would point to the center of the mandala (which shows up in all cultures as a religious symbol) and illustrate how there are as many ways to the center of the Self as there are people alive.  But nobody has said that any of it’s easy. Even so, I invite you to look at things differently as you read through these musings, and ponder how these three ‘ingredients’ might change your life in unconscious but profound ways as you apply them to the stew.

    A Taste for Existentialism

What a big “ism” that word is! So many of us have heard it over the years, but like a half-heard conversation, we often don’t quite get it. We remember that those French Café sitters would debate it earnestly in the early 1900’s and that Jean Paul Sartre was the unacknowledged sage of the group. But his strident atheism and fictional dips into the theatre of the absurd was not endearing to most people. Rather it was Albert Camus, with his humanist agnosticism, and compassionate sense of the importance of responsibility to oneself and to others, that gave existentialism a heart.

The existentialists believed that we may indeed live in a world devoid of innate meaning, but that by our choices and our “authenticity” we create meaning for ourselves and others. “Existence precedes essence”, they would say, and they believed that the life choices we make need to come out of a deep connection with our personal values. For them, to live an inauthentic life, based on bourgeois unreflective values, would create such a false existence that our lives would begin to crumble as we saw our shallowness reflected in other people’s eyes….thus Sartre’s comment in his play, No Exit, that “Hell is other people.”

 Camus was not a stranger to these ideas, but embraced them and became politically and socially active in the French Resistance Movement in World War II and espoused a softer and more humane response to the radical ideas of these times. As a rebel with heart, this author of “The Stranger” was an outsider at times, but also perhaps a precursor to the beat generation in the US that evolved slightly after his time.

Both of these men, and the Existentialists that came before and after them, felt the uniqueness and isolation of the individual living in a world that so often feels hostile or indifferent. For them it didn’t matter if God did or did not exist because ‘he’ seemed indifferent to the plight of their time--- living during and between the World Wars--- when their Judeo-Christian backgrounds didn’t hold up well to the level of evil they were seeing, nor to the level of alienation they witnessed in the techno-industrial working world. They passionately caught on to the idea that what could possibly carry us out of this meaninglessness is our courageous use of freedom of choice and in being responsible for the consequences of our actions.

It took courage to challenge the religious assumptions of their time and to cross a threshold of thinking in which they were mocked as being pessimistic, pedantic, and weird. There were no external authorities to back them up, nor guidelines, nor a sacred book. They were free thinkers, philosophers, and activists.

Today they feel to some of us like lonely heroes. They proselytized action and encounter with life as coming before any innate meaning. They urged us to heroically force life to mean something---to choose values and act from those values again and again against a culture that unwittingly tries disempower and hypnotize us all into a collective sleep. The existentialists were champions of creative people and those who sought freedom in which to make their choices. And they knew how hard it was---as Camus said:

“If there is a soul, it is a mistake to believe that is given to us fully created. Rather it is created here, throughout a whole life. And living is nothing else but that long and painful bringing forth.”

In that long and painful bringing forth there’s a tendency to lose a sense of meaning from time to time, and just as you must stop the bleeding when an artery is cut, you must also stop the bleeding away of meaning. Otherwise, you lose energy and creativity  as depression and inertia steels over us. And when we look to the creative giants of our day, we see that even productivity itself  isn’t a guarantee against loss of meaning---Van Gogh was an example of that.

Eric Maisel, a writer and creativity coach, has concrete suggestions for the “meaning crisis” that we all have to deal with occasionally. As a creative existentialist, this is what he says in his book The Van Gogh Blues :

“Part of the answer is the basic attitude you adopt, the basic heroism you show moment-in and moment-out. Part of the answer us understanding your self-talk and getting a grip on your own mind. Part of the answer is doing worthy creative work… work that pleases you, makes you proud, and inoculates you against meaning losses. Part of the answer is repairing yourself, rebuilding your brain, your body, and your personality in your own best image…..What will save you is your expert work at forcing life to mean…but meaning means nothing until you tell the universe where you stand.”

More to come...what do you think????????????????

                                                "When I'm Sixty-three…"
                       The Constant Invitation of Uranus Transits

  "If you think you’re about to fall, point your hands in the direction you are going,
       and dive gracefully. At the very least you’ll inspire someone watching you."  
                       E. Spring

'When I'm sixty-three'…or twenty-one, forty-two, sixty-three or eighty-four years old, something rather magical happens---or can happen. Uranus transits happen to everyone at approximately these ages and we play them out 'well' when we savor the epiphanies and opportunities rather than trying to maintain the status quo. It may feel like we're falling or coming apart, but Uranus aspects are truly opportunities to 'soar' rather than dive. These are the years of radical new beginnings that give us the chance to become more of who we really are.  Henry David Thoreau once noted: "We are constantly invited to be who we are." Uranus transits are the constant invitation.

Whether you're falling down, waking up or dancing to your own drumbeat, there are times when you may wonder—isn't there a different way to do this? 'Diving gracefully' is always a good option if you are falling, but there are times when if you want to soar you're going to have to break the rules. These periods of Uranian liberation call for you to challenge the status quo---but how do you know when you should 'color outside the lines' and when you should respect 'the lines' that others have made?

Although it's a bit simplistic, we could say that we respect the limits during Saturn transits and break the limits during Uranus transits. Look to see what area of your life—what house-- Uranus falls in on your natal chart.  This is where you have divine dispensation to break the rules! One might even say that you are not only given permission to do things differently in this area of your life, but that you must do things differently and authentically here—you are called-- in this area of your life-- to be radically honest and a little more daring than ordinary.

For example, if you have Uranus in the Fourth house there is a subtle divine imperative that you rebel against your family of origin in some way. You don't have to do it dis-respectively and you don't have to stop loving and communicating with them. However, you are called to break the rules of the family myth here—as the family myth may sound like this: 'Isn't it funny how all the men on this side of the family are bi-polar?' Or 'Isn't it funny how all the women of this family marry abusive men?’ With Uranus in the fourth house you probably have heard some variation of a 'not-so-funny’ theme like this handed down the family line and you're going to need to make a conscious effort to break this family legacy.

For you to survive spiritually there are times when you need to learn to stand up to authorities and separate yourself from what has been culturally ingrained in you. You may think you are already aware of these influences and that you did the work of rebelling against these cultural imperatives when you were 21 ---or before. Yet it may have taken you to the Uranus opposition at the age of 42 to realize how deeply you were programmed to be a certain way. Maybe it took that long for you to divorce the wrong person you married, and to reclaim your Soul. Uranian times call for you to challenge yourself and rebel against your own assumptions about what’s right for you.

Radical acts of reclaiming ourselves and daring to break the rules can happen at any age and are specific to you alone. However, it's almost as if the Universe gives you a chance for enlightenment or liberation at those ages when Uranus metaphorically 'turns the lights on and off' in your life. What was going on for you at the Uranus waxing square at 21? The opposition at 42? What could happen at the waning square at 63 and the return at 84? 

At 21 years our culture says we are now an adult, but in fact, most of us have been in school or in less-than-empowering positions for most of this time. Our parents and the culture have exerted pressure, overtly and covertly, to mold us into something. Now we have the first chance to say---"but this is now my time and I want to find out who I really am."  So we summon our courage—often with the help of our peers and abundant sources of alcohol—to dare to move out on our own into whatever may await us. But it's usually not till we're close to thirty, and have the first responsibilities of true adulthood—at the first Saturn Return, that we commit to a deeper level of our truth and make major and usually sobering ‘Saturnian’ life-style changes. But that's only part of the story.
 
In the process of living our adult lives, parts of us never get a chance to be expressed. In order to raise the family and/or pursue the career, we live our lives with parts of our essential nature sacrificed. We tell ourselves that some day we will take up singing/painting/writing again, but at the moment we have to handle 2 kids or 2 jobs and we have to make enough money to pay for the cell phones as well. But when we approach 40, the awareness comes to us that we're at mid-life and we're closer to our death than our birth---and by 42-ish the lights have been blinking on and off just enough to remind us that if we're going to do 'it' we better start now or we may never do it at all. So we have the first classic mid-life epiphany of waking up to the preciousness of time. Many people will marry, divorce, move across country, or take up ‘guitar playing’ at this time.

We may be shocked by how liberated we finally feel when we act on what appears to be impulse at the Uranus opposition. But that impulse has had years of pressure building up behind it. And yet if we should miss this chance, we get another chance for living our deepest truth at the waning square of Uranus at age 63. We may have thought that the time for new beginnings has ended. Not so!

It's worth taking a moment to think of what makes 'an elder' an interesting and vital person.  What gives charisma to an older man or woman?  Could it be that they don't care so much about what other people think about them any more? This Uranian attitude is one part simple acceptance of themselves and others, and one part  'detached wildness.'  This quality of wildness looks more like a wide smile and a quick laugh than a purple hat with a red feather.

 At each of these Uranus cycles—at 21 and 42 and 63 and 84 we get a new chance to answer the voice within us that calls for more unique individuality. Even at 84 when Uranus returns to its birth position, there’s a part of us that opens up to ways of seeing things differently. Personal epiphanies abound at age 84 and people often notice a renewed sense of well-being and a feeling like a ‘breath of fresh air has come into their lives’. Some people, such as Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell ‘completed’ their lives at this time.

The closeness of death itself stimulates us to recover our core individuality. You are being called at these Uranian ages to allow a radical honesty to arise within you---and to take up the 'yoga of doubt and questioning' and turn questioning into 'questing'.  Being true to yourself requires courage, but life helps us as we approach these 'Uranian times.'  You don't have to know all the answers and figure it all out yourself. These are the times when you can expect help from the Universe by the occurrence of unexpected events--- unusual feelings, new opportunities, and paradoxical situations. Not all will be pleasant, but the effect will be to move you to the next stage of your life journey.

Uranian transits are times to answer inner restlessness with a 'Yes'!  Try something liberating and freeing---make a little noise; cause a little havoc, give up trying to be too self-sacrificing.  (If a child is always 'too good' don't you become suspicious? What is being repressed? Why are they saying they're bored?) At these ages you have a ‘divine dispensation’ to break the rules-- so ask yourself: how have I allowed life to dampen my energy? What's inhibited me? What still resonates and stimulates me when I think of it?

Einstein once said: 'God doesn't play dice with the universe.' I don't think God plays dice with us either, and no event is without the potential for using it for creative liberation. The writer George Eliot wrote: 'It is never too late to be what you might have been.' Experiment with that idea, and let your mantra be: ‘Let's do something different.’  And if you should fall or fail…well, as I said earlier: 'point your hands in the direction you are going, and dive gracefully. At the very least, you may inspire someone watching you.'  But chances are, you'll soar.

Elizabeth Spring              © Jan 2007
www.elizabethspring.com
Elizabethspring@aol.com          401-294-5863

Elizabeth Spring MA is an astrologer and psychotherapist working in Wickford and Newport, RI. She has a degree in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in the work of Carl Jung, and has written many articles for newspapers and magazines which can be read on-line on her website at www.elizabethspring.com 






     
 

                                            Moving Beyond Exhaustion and Depression;
                                               Your Saturn Transits 
       
 

It has often been said that under strong Saturn transits one can choose between exhaustion and depression---some choice! It implies that because Saturn is often about doing sweaty work in the real world, that exhaustion is the better choice, indicating as Mark Twain once said: "It is better to wear out than to rust out."  So folks who understand ‘just a little’ astrology, view the coming of a Saturn Return or any Saturn transit, with raised eyebrows and deep sighs. But then a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Saturn also brings to mind the two ancient Greek maxims, inscribed
at the Temple at Delphi: “Know thyself" and “Nothing in excess.” One might think that by understanding and trying to live by these wise sayings one could avoid the great troubles in life. Perhaps they help; but still we seem to suffer. Our understanding of these words change as we age, but life often plays some nasty tricks on us in the meantime. Perhaps this is why we have Saturn transits—it’s a chance to get it right this time.

Saturn is the archetypal symbol for a way of being, or a process that slows us down and makes us take a cold hard look at reality. It can feel like the voice of the inner critic and in ancient times it was seen as “the old malefic” when its passage in the chart was viewed with some suspicion. It has roots in the idea of melancholy, timely delay, and redefining our lives from the very foundation. Despite any fatigue or depression, we are pressured to act at these Saturnian times, and ideally the action we must take will follow the insight and maturity that has been developing over time. For astrologers, it is a topic we are endlessly exploring with our clients.

However Saturn also represents the arrival of the harvest and our reward for hard work and effort. It brings a good harvest if we’re willing to wait. Its passage in a chart---especially at the time of the Saturn Returns-- marks a time when we have an opportunity for deep change and life-changing rewards. Not so bad!

There are two Saturn Returns that happen to everybody—the first is between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty, and the second, between the ages of fifty-eight and sixty. It’s necessary to consult the ephemeris or your astrologer to find the exact date for you, but the feeling of the Saturn Return saturates this whole time period. Astrologically speaking, the first Return is when we truly come into our adulthood, and the second is when we come into the wisdom of our Elder
.
 It’s true that our culture sees the age of twenty-one as the time of  becoming an adult—but not for astrologers. For us it’s twenty-eight. And you may get your Social Security at sixty-five, but it’s at the second Saturn Return at around fifty-eight that your true personal and social security comes up for review. Saturn Returns can be times of rough passages-- or harvest--and they’re usually a bit of both.

The good news is that although Saturn’s transits in our lives may mark times of plain hard work and great self-questioning, it’s also a time when opportunities present themselves and the rewards can be great.  Procrastination doesn't look like a good option any more. Perhaps our old lover is finally gone—and there’s someone on the horizon that looks really good—but will we make the same mistakes and bring our grief and anger with us into this fresh chance? Or  perhaps we’ve landed the new job, and now the work is profound--- and really hard. Or we’ve become pregnant, and we’re not feeling too great. The astrologer will say—hang in there, and do what needs to be done. Do your Saturn.

   That’s the feeling of a Saturn transit, and especially the first Saturn Return, but look what’s coming! If you follow through with your vision, you’ve taken the first steps towards a true new beginning.  

 The first Saturn Return, in the late twenties, is often marked by these kinds of personal milestones. The navigational tools are twofold: you must take a chance now, and you must give it all you can.  If you are willing, you will be rewarded.

 Saturn often asks us “Whose movie am I in?” and then challenges us to be the director and author. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we could just read some ‘manual to life’, and have the ghost of “Christmas Future” come to us to show us the way? Instead, we are called to become our own ‘author-ity’---to truly become the author of our life.

We are being asked now to re-write our personal life scripts with our own spiritual muscle. Not always so easy, especially when our life drama is full of people and situations that no longer reflect who we really are and what we are becoming. The human unconscious has ways of conjuring up people, events, and situations that challenge us to the bone.  It’s almost as if the unconscious ‘hires’ other people to play out parts of our life stories—this one is the boss, this one the victim, this one the unfaithful lover. At Saturnian junctures in your life you’ve probably “had it” with some of these people/roles and it’s time to write them out of your life script.  We are now challenged to take back our projections and to look at the drama of our life as our responsibility.  It’s too late to blame anyone anymore.

 The Second Saturn Return, in the late fifties, is a time that calls for concrete actions in the real world, but it can be more subtle and sometimes more insidious. If we don’t do what needs to be done now, we may not be given a second chance.  If we put off our yearly physical exam and don’t stop the spread of some nasty growth, it may be too late later.  If we take a stiff upper lip and deny the fact that “the job is killing me, but I must wait till retirement age,” it may indeed kill you. 

 As the body ages, depression and fatigue inevitably arise, yet as the body becomes less an object of vanity it’s a chance for the Spirit to rise.  This is the time when we may feel an uprising of irritability as a few old habits have the chance to rear their nasty heads again.  This is because now is the time to cut them off—to be done once and for all with it.  You may ask yourself: why am I dealing with these same issues again?  The answer is---because you’ve almost resolved them. And the last straw can be the hardest.  The hallmark of the second Saturn Return is that if you deal maturely with the old pockets of unfinished business you gain the gift that will last till the end—the gift of wisdom. You become an Elder.
 
     And how do you do that? Priorities need to be clearer, and metaphorical closets and basements cleaned.  There is a need to look at what we feel disillusioned about and let the illusions go, lest these old ghosts feed on us and make us bitter. It’s a time to slow down and allow more sweetness and companionship into our lives, and to let the wild dogs of ambitious willfulness fight elsewhere.
 And if we’re going to be ambitious, we need to do it in a way in which we can bring the fruits of our life experiences to bear on the project—such as returning to something we already do well but doing it even better. We need to develop an attitude of reverence. This is the beginning of wisdom.  And as we acquire that, we will be called to ‘mentor’—to pass along the gifts of our learning.

So what are the tools needed to successfully navigate Saturnian waters?  Here are a few ideas:
 1—Be Discerning. You are at a time now when you understand things you didn’t understand even last year. Use your new wisdom to make wise choices based on clarity of intention. Dream into your future and discern the path through the woods. Here is where the quotes: “Know thyself” and “Nothing in Excess” become relevant. At these ages there is a necessity to pull back from the excesses of your younger years and to know what you can and cannot do.
 2—Take Heart. Find ways to reach out to others and be humble enough to ask for advice. If your marriage is in trouble, ask yourself the question: Is the relationship the true source of dissatisfaction, or is it the repository of your own misery? How much are you projecting your insecurities onto your partner, and not taking responsibility or even listening ‘with heart’?
3—Go Deeper. Superficial all or nothing solutions are a quick fix and Saturn doesn’t like quick fixes. Stretch beyond your comfort zones to new places of thought and action. As was said so many years ago:
                    “Dig deep; the water—goodness—is down there.
And as long as you keep digging it will keep bubbling up.”                                        Marcus Antoninis
4--Take Action. Saturn rewards those that act and depresses those who procrastinate. In ancient texts, Saturn was sometimes seen as a devil who made a hand signal that said: “All that you see, is all there is.” That’s the devil’s lie.  Prove him wrong.

 So Saturn can be seen as the spirit of Father Time, passing through our lives at these transits and “Returns” in the way Scrooge experienced his encounter with the Spirits of the past, present, and future.  The purpose of these visits wasn’t to give Scrooge the ‘willies’ and a bad case of nerves, but to give him a second chance at life.  He saw himself differently, he grieved, he tried denying and avoiding, but ultimately he acted, and propelled himself—just in time—for his new birth and new life.

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